Let us suppose now that the Vigilance Association after a sharp crusade has succeeded in redeeming our literature from all reprehensible matter, and flushed with success has attacked the newspapers and obtained an interdiction against the publication of all reports of sexual crimes and misdemeanors. And having extended our imagination so far we may presume as the sequence a world of such highly developed moral susceptibilities that Miss Austen's novels are beginning to cause uneasiness. Miss Austen's novels are still permitted, but in current literature nothing is said that would lead the reader to suppose that men and women are not of the same sex. But men and women still continue to meet and hold conversation. Only some advanced members of the Association are in favor of that complete separation of the sexes which obtains in Ireland in the rural districts. In the imaginary time of which I am writing the Association has only obtained complete control over literature. The theaters are either closed or given over to the representation of plays on religious subjects; but private life has not been invaded by the Puritan missionary, and waltz tunes are still heard and figures seen whirling past lighted windows in Grosvenor Square and Fifth Avenue. Mr. Coote has at this time become a moderate, he is no longer among the progressives, and is in danger of losing his post, so I have no difficulty in imagining what he would do in such a dilemma. He would disguise himself as a waiter and at the next meeting of the Society tell how he had until now showed some reluctance to--the sentence would be a difficult one to finish, perhaps Mr. Coote would break off and say--reluctance to put restraint on the action of men and women as long as they kept within their own doors, but after what he has seen, he finds himself obliged to pass from the moderates to the progressives. What has Mr. Coote seen. How would he tell his tale?